My mother was a packrat when she was young. Her closets at Locksley Hall, the house I grew up in, were crammed full as were the rooms- furniture, bric-a-brac, Civil War documents, guns, general shit. She went through a phase of making footstools out of empty juice cans covered with fabric and there were tons of these, as there were tons of latchhooks and rag rugs and the like. She had furniture that belonged to every dead relative whose furniture she had access to and she had boxes and boxes of items from her father’s estate that had never been unpacked or labelled. The house was 4000 square feet and you’d have been hard pressed to fit so much as a chair without it starting to look like my grandmother’s house next door (where you’d have been hard pressed to fit a matchbook). She kept the place clean even though housekeeping was something she didn’t enjoy- I don’t mean to imply this was one of those insane Gothic houses with floor to ceiling magazines and a disassembled Model T in the dining room, it was just very cluttered.
In 1987 she and I moved to Montgomery. We were broke, deeply in debt, on the run from the law for various minor charges, the house had long ago been foreclosed on but the sheriff who was ordered to perform eviction was a friend/former lodge brother/felt a personal debt to my by then considerably dead father, so he would not physically evict us (we later learned- at the time we expected him any minute). Consequently we came to Montgomery with what we could haul in 2 or 3 trips with a Chevette and one (1) trip with a borrowed pick-up truck, and we left behind 4000 square feet of furniture and boxes and junk that I couldn’t even begin to inventory. A formal dining room suite, several sets of (aged) encyclopedias, a 1910s sofa-bed (they not only had them then, it was the most comfortable sofa bed I’ve ever slept on in its mutated state- more like a futon), the family tin-type pics and God knows how many things like lamps and ashtrays and rugs or how many empty juice can in velvet footstools. We’re talking a ton of stuff. Before we could return for more with the borrowed truck, Sheriff “Sidney” was informed we had abandoned the place and, being pressured by his superiors and the bank, went ahead and carried out the eviction in our absence (which I do not fault him for, he was doing his job, and I majorly appreciate his waiting so as not to humiliate us) and most of the furnishings were put out on the road where they very quickly became the personal property of dozens of our Christian neighbors from that end of the county and whoever else was told. (I’ve heard the descriptions from a woman who lived in my grandmother’s house and salvaged what she could for us- cars were lined up for half a mile of people in broad open daylight helping themselves and then for weeks later folks would stop by to break in the house and go through what had been left, because an old sheriff with a heart problem and a couple of dimwitted deputies can’t do much more than bring out the big pieces of stuff and there were tons of little things left. So much was left that when I was able to go up there again, months later, and walked through the back door (that was boarded up but the boards were so frequently removed that they slid right out and the nailholes were several times too wide) I was still able to salvage a little bit myself in Victor Yugo. (Mainly it was books, my father’s diploma, and other items that had no real value.)
Also still in the house while I was there were the broken box springs to my parents king sized bed in the cavernous remains of their bedroom (and speaking of remains and bedrooms the remains of one of the ‘welfare dogs’ we took care of had died- possibly from being trapped inside by the bummers who had been there many times- and its noisome decomposed body covered by somebody at some point with bedspreads and clothes and weighted down with books, but from what was left of the part of its tail that was sticking out I knew it had been One-Eye, a hunting dog abandoned years before.
While I was there an elderly couple let themselves in and began shopping as well- they had no idea who I was and the woman asked if I’d please help her husband- “his hip’s tore up” move the broken box springs onto their truck, so I did. “Look like somebody tossed them blocks through them glass doors don’t it?” I even helped him get the wire from the rabbit hutches and told him where he could find some posthole diggers and other tools in a tool shed that wasn’t visible from the patio he parked by. I never introduced myself and he just assumed I was another looter. No idea what he thought he’d do with broken box springs, but I left with a bunch of papers and books, my View Master Reels (which were where I’d stashed them in my “secret place”) and Gepetto. I went to the nearest town, bought a 4 piece fried chicken meal at KFC, ate two pieces while driving the 20 miles back to our house where I gave the other two to Bela (it was dark by then) and that’s the last time I saw inside of Locksley Hall.
So why’s this relevant? Well most probably isn’t, but that’s never stopped me before. But I’ll get back on the M Train.
Repeating myself, my mother and I took what we could in 2 or 3 small carloads and one pickup truck bed when we came to Montgomery. My aunt gave us a mattress and that, on the floor (no frame) was where I slept 5 nights a week and my mother slept 2 nights per week (she slept at her job the other 5). The apartment was bare- there were some bookshelves and a corner cabinet and other smaller items my grandfather, Mustang, had made that got moved in the truck, and a rickety dining table, and our clothes and an odd assortment of bric a brac and books that we’d brought and enough plates and cookware for us, but no big furniture other than what I’ve mentioned. We even somehow had enough presence of mind to bring the irreplaceable things: most of the photographs, all the frigging burial insurance policies and important papers, my great-aunt’s flapper regalia, my great-great-grandmother’s butter churn (antebellum but not that valuable- I’m told the dasher is more valuable) and some of the antiques my mother had picked up over the years (none particularly valuable), some huge rocks blown by Mt. St. Helens, the cannonball Mustang had found while fishing, and box fulls of the little irreplaceable things.
Luckily, most movable items of any real value were already in Montgomery in pawn shops: my grandmother’s flatware, a silver Georgian teapot, guns, the good china, and other stuff, and we managed to pay the 20% each month, though some months it was by pawning other items.
I’m frankly amazed at how much we did bring and how two people who were beyond stressed out as we were did manage to choose as many irreplaceable items as we brought rather than a can of Crisco, a Panama City Beach towel and two broken skillets (the fact the valuable stuff was in pawn shops saved it having to be moved). But as said, the place was bare and we were broke.
We were so broke and so in need of furnishings I fished good looking stuff out of the dumpster of the apartment complex (some great lamps, lawnchairs, an end table) and on weekends I used to drive through nice neighborhoods after estate/yard sales looking for freebies (found some impressive ones too). Many years later my mother and I would recall this time with bittersweet nostalgia because it truly was “the best of times, it was the worst of times”- the best being that we had finally gotten away from that godawful place and we were both young enough to enjoy it, I was 20 and for the first time living in a city with friends near my own age, etc., the worst because of everything else and particularly money.)
Now my sister, one of the cheapest millionaires you’ll ever meet to not live in a hovel (she’s of the Jack Benny/Milburn Drysdale variety of miser rather than the Hetty Green- she lives with some comfort but she’ll drive you fucking nuts trying to save $.20 on a container of Comet or reusing sandwich bags and paper towels) has also done dumpster diving and “side of the road” shopping (and living in a beach city that’s been hit hard by hurricanes and is an area of constant construction she has made some incredible finds) so she would join in on these conversations thinkin thinks she understands this period of our (me and my mother’s) lives so as we recalled “That godawful brown chaise that was ugly as hell and missing two legs but we were so proud of it when we found it on the curb at that church” my sister would chime in with “oh yeah, I found an ironing board on the side of the road two weeks ago and put it in my truck cause it’s better than the one I was using— and 7 boxes of perfectly good ceramic floor tile left over from a condo renovation! I totally understand why you did that type of stuff”. I think it’s funny that she dumpster dives and curb shops, but it’s not the same thing: she had the option of buying a new ironing board, we had no option of buying furniture, that’s why a ratty overstuffed dusty chaise from a well-off 1960s bedroom that today I’d never think of bringing into my house (cause it wasn’t retro or kitsch, just old) looked like an “all you can take away for $15” sale at Bishop Parker in 1986. (I think in some odd way “the best of times” aspects also had to do with the ingenuity of furnishing a place when you’re dead broke.)
Anyway, I’m totally off-point, so I’ll get back to it. Because of the bareness of the apartments we shared for the first couple of years and because the empty space reminded her of what all she’d lost (materially and otherwise) and because she was a packrat to begin with, my mother spent the last 20 years of her life rarely letting anything she liked, even moderately, and could afford (big qualifier) get away. She died owning a medium-sized townhouse that was floor to ceiling full of STUFF (again, not talking Langley & Home Collyer type full, but as full as it could be and still be liveable and relatively neat). Most of it had neither real nor sentimental value. Ticky tacky ceramic houses she bought at DOLLAR TREE, railroad spikes that reminded her of the trains from her childhood from a yard sale, huge brass candleholders and vases, plates, platters, more plates, more platters, enough drinking glasses to quench the thirst of Coxey’s Army without anybody having to worry about mono, cookware (good God at the cookware- about 10 quart sized boilers ALONE), STAR TREK board-games never taken out of the shrink wrap (she was a Trekkie and just liked the pics on front and thought “this might be collectible one day” [the general rule of thumb of “if it says collectible, it’s not collectible” applies), stuffed animals, bells, flatware, more plates, more platters, knives, knick-knacks of every kind and most of them crap, things she couldn’t remember where she bought them but for some reason liked at that moment and they cost pocket change, vases out the wazoo, doilies (I HATE doilies), boxes and boxes and more boxes (the wooden hinged kind), telephones (if it was cheap she bought it- there are three boxed telephones in her closet she bought for about a dollar each when a store was going out of business- they’re between the 2 battery operated b/w TV sets she bought there for $6 each that are also still in the box), scarves, coasters, tools (ooh, big one- never saw a screwdriver or hammer she didn’t like), just. Literally. TONS. Of stuff. Freudian transference overaccumulation. In the house I grew up in I think it was cluttered mainly because she had a ton of stuff and a lot of space and she didn’t want to throw things away while they were usable (child of the Depression and all that), but in the last 2 decades I think she added to this an actual hatred of bare space because it recalled a time when there was no money and nothing to fill it with and no pieces of furniture matched [as an homage to that time she had an odd decorating policy to the day she died: no piece of wood could be put into her living room or dining room, whether furniture or coaster or decoration or any other kind, IF it matched any other piece of wood already in there, and thus there are a dozen different shades and grains of wood among her dining room furniture and ornamentation alone).
MORE LATER
) In a family Wann See “Final Solution of Mama” conference my sister and I hit upon a plan of action: